


Luck

by beaubete



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: F/M, M/M, Selkies, the real pairing is James/angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-10
Updated: 2013-02-10
Packaged: 2017-11-28 19:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/677801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beaubete/pseuds/beaubete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's said a man makes his own luck; James's is bad all around, so what does that say about him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Luck

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a fill for a prompt on one of the James Bond kink memes.

To see one is lucky; seeing two is supposed to be impossible. James feels like the unluckiest man ever, because only that man would find two of what he wants most in the world and know both times he can’t keep it.  
  
He met Vesper when he was still in the Navy. A beautiful woman with dark, shining hair and haunted eyes, he’d met her on the beach one night and lost himself in the sway of her slender arms. They’d danced without music for hours. He’d fed her wine from the bottle and taken her there on the sand by the fire, grit clinging in places that should have been uncomfortable if he weren’t so in love. And when she lay there on the sand, moonlit and milky, her perfect breasts bare and nipples pebbled in the night air, when she lay there and trusted and slept, he’d found it. Found the watery skin and stuffed it in his bag and kept her, and she’d watched him with sad, haunted eyes for months.   
  
And he’d thought it would help to take her away from the water. Or maybe he hadn’t; maybe it had been selfishness, hoping that farther inland she wouldn’t be able to watch him with eyes like the moon on the ocean at night, wouldn’t be able to hear the crashing of the waves in her blood, wouldn’t feel the way the tide clutched at her with both hands, always always dragging her away from him. And he’d been cruel, not stupid. He’d burned the damned thing.  
  
The selkie show themselves to the lonely. The perpetually alone, the ones left behind. They’re solitary creatures, fierce and strong enough to withstand the frozen northern waters. They’re beautiful, sweet white skin and dark, dark eyes. The only way to keep one is to kill it, because taking away its seal skin is worse than murder; he found her in the bath, hair curling like tendrils of seaweed around her pale, still face. Her lips were dark, her eyes open. He’d sobbed.  
  
Seeing one is lucky. Taking her home to be your wife, a man can ask for no better a wife than a selkie. But the sea will always call for them, and James knows the rules: once every seven years. So when he sees the boy’s shy smile, the way he twists to look at him so unselfconscious of his nudity there on the sand in the flickering shadow of the fire, he aches. The boy’s clumsy in his human form, so thin and gangly and gracefully coltish; there’s nothing shameful about the shape of his arms or legs as they wrap around James’s shaking body. “I’ve seen you watching us,” the boy says. “You look sad.”  
  
And as the boy sleeps peaceful on his shoulder, he can see it there, lying in the open like the moon’s reflection in a puddle. He doesn’t touch it.


End file.
